The last five years of actress and comedian Jenny Slate's life have been a whirl. A season on "Saturday Night Live" (where she ad-libbed an F-bomb on live TV, the shock of her faux pas registering on her face the moment the word left her mouth); recurring roles on "Bored to Death," "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," "Kroll Show," "House of Lies," "Parks and Recreation" and "Bob's Burgers"; guest shots on "Raising Hope" and "Girls"; and movies that include "This Means War" and "The Lorax."

On the Web, she starred in "Catherine" and "Marcel the Shell With Shoes On," projects she created and wrote with her husband, Dean Fleischer-Camp. The charming, stop-motion animated "Marcel" spawned a New York Times best-selling book; a second is coming out in November. Bookending all of it is Gillian Robespierre's "Obvious Child," first a short and now a feature, both about a New York stand-up comedian named Donna Stern facing an unexpected pregnancy.

"If astrological charts, natal charts, are a thing, I would love to do know what mine said about that time, because Gill asked me to do the short in winter of 2009," Slate says during a recent visit to San Francisco. "I did it, and then I had my first professional acting on TV job on 'Bored to Death' just a few months later. Then a couple of months after that, I was on 'SNL.' My career started from that time, it all happened.

" 'Obvious Child' the short had a nice life online and a great festival run, but the short and the feature still stand apart from everything else I've done," she says. "I play a woman who you might meet in life. My other work is much more heightened. I enjoy all of it, but I don't know. Sometimes you just get swooped up into stuff. That's what happened to me at that time."

The film itself stands apart from other films dealing with abortion. For one thing, it is a romantic comedy with "The Office's" Jake Lacy playing Max, a new man in Donna's life. For another, the subject is simply treated as a matter of fact. Donna's life is already in turmoil and she can barely take care of herself when she discovers that she's pregnant.

"There are lots of films that have abortion in them, but the reason that Gillian wanted to write this was because she hadn't seen one where a woman decides to have a safe procedure and is firm in her choice and where the procedure is not the cause of her anxiety," Slate says. "The cause of her emotional turmoil is that she's dumped, she's fired, that she loses her confidence onstage. Those things are important. It's a character study, and the abortion does not create the character."

Robespierre and Slate met when the filmmaker and her co-writers on the short Karen Maine and Anna Bean, at the suggestion of a mutual friend, came to see her and her best friend and partner Gabe Liedman perform their stand-up routine. She didn't know it, but the show was Slate's audition. When it came to the feature, Robespierre wrote it specifically for Slate.

"This was something someone had written after observing you and observing your strengths and observing your vulnerabilities," Slate says. "I felt that someone was offering me another summer at camp at the age of 31."

Similarities end

Slate and Donna are both stand-up comedians. They both live in Brooklyn. Liedman is fellow stand-up Joey, playing onscreen to Donna the role he plays for real in Slate's life. But, Slate says, the similarities between the women end there.

"I'm not very much like Donna. Her attitude is a lot different than mine. I'm not sarcastic at all. I'm incredibly gullible and often don't understand dry humor. My husband makes fun of me. I don't register it at all. I sometimes think my earnestness is confused for stupidity, but it shouldn't be. It's exciting to play someone who is a bit tougher than I am. I liked feeling those adjustments. I liked understanding what it might feel like to be that way, if only for 18 days.

"It's very exciting to lend my stand-up to this, because as a comedian, I've always felt like I like the way I do stand-up, but it's not one-liners," she adds. "It's very personal, and it's not for everywhere. You have to have a little bit of patience for me, I think. It's nice for me to put it out there. There's not one type of stand-up, just like there's not one type of woman."

The torrid pace of Slate's career continues. She's acted in two more films, "Digging for Fire" and "The Longest Week." She's lending her voice to more "Bob's Burgers."

This summer, in addition to "Obvious Child" hitting theaters, her new FX series "Married" is premiering in July. In it, she plays what she describes as a "non-trophy trophy wife" to Paul Reiser and a woman with a lot of daddy issues. In the decade since Slate started doing stand-up at 22, her career has blossomed. The little girl who thought of acting as her sport at summer camp is living her dream.

Happy to act

"It's fairly diverse in the things I get to do, which is lucky. That's how I like to live," she says, adding, "I guess I've always wanted to be a movie actress. I like the feeling of completeness at the end of the film. That just feels really good. I always wanted to be an actress, so I'm happy whatever I'm doing, but I would really like to mostly work in film." {sbox}